re: We desperately need O to succeed because there are no guarantees.

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so you may as well go to Outback

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More like McDonalds. Yeah, it’s that bad.

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Had we hired an elite coach your emotions going into the season might have been quite different.

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Oh...be we didn't even need to hire an "elite" coach. there are only a very small handful of coaches at any level that nearly everyone can agree are "elite" right?

So...while we may have all loved a hire most considered elite or at least "sexy" at the end of the day we'd have all been better served by a hire that was arguable to be at least "competent."

When you hire a guy with a 10-25 career head coaching record, you really don't need to have hired an elite coach to have made a significantly more likely to succeed hire.

Agree.
But LSU was in a position to hire the best (or one of the best) HC candidates available in the country.To set our sights only on one that is adjudged "competent" would to be too low of a bar, yet we may have failed even that.

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But LSU was in a position to hire the best (or one of the best) HC candidates available in the country.

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100%. LSU was in as good a position as it's ever been in terms of it's ability to attract an "elite" head coach. Money, prestige, recruiting fields, etc. Despite the fact that our program was seen to have leveled out over the past few seasons, it is still only a handful of seasons removed from the National Championship game and a few from winning it all. In fact, this mindset was EXACTLY what we were sold when they announced the Orgeron hire, right? That we were THIIIIIIIIIS close and all we needed was a new HC.

The only obstacle would have been triangulating the best names on the board with who was legitimately available. Truth is, some years are better than others in this regards depending on who's available, etc.

But there were a solid group of coaches that would have been nearly universally accepted as home run hires who WERE gettable had LSU made even the slightest attempt to land them.

Instead, we opted for Ed Orgeron and his career HC record of 10-25 in our own division of our very own conference.

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To set our sights only on one that is adjudged "competent" would to be too low of a bar, yet we may have failed even that.

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Oh, don't misunderstand my point. I'm not suggesting that in November of 2015 we should have been targeting coaches in the mediocre "competent" level. Just that given we hired an abject failure, competent would have ended up being a likely significant upgrade from what we ended up with.

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You're asking the wrong questions. The question isn't who is a guarantee, but why in the frick did alleva hire a guy who, quite literally, averaged one (1) SEC win per year in his previous SEC head coaching job. The guy had 3 SEC wins in 3 seasons. And he replaced a natl champ coach.

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Yep, your point cannot be disputed. The Canada ouster followed with the promotion of Ensminger will tell the tale. Retaining Aranda was huge, but this Ensminger thing looks like a ginormous mistake as he has not been a full time QB Coach and/or OC in many years. The hope is he will shock us all.

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This is not that complicated: Your feeling of desperation arises out of having O as a head coach. Had we hired an elite coach your emotions going into the season might have been quite different. You might feel "confident", for example.

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without question, nitwit

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there were a solid group of coaches that would have been nearly universally accepted as home run hires who WERE gettable had LSU made even the slightest attempt to land them.

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Exactly. I remember during the A&M game, when ESPN announced we were hiring Herman the following morning, the announcers for the game had a discussion on this. Their opinion(and likely the truth given any AD besides Alleva making the hire) was that there were only a handful of coaches that wouldn’t AT LEAST consider LSU. Saban, Meyer, Dabo, Peterson, Harbaugh, and maybe 1 or 2 other coaches. Nearly any other coach would have at least had discussions with LSU.

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ow can you possibly predict O to be a quality head coach when he has never done it

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See how that works?

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Exactly. I remember during the A&M game, when ESPN announced we were hiring Herman the following morning, the announcers for the game had a discussion on this. Their opinion(and likely the truth given any AD besides Alleva making the hire) was that there were only a handful of coaches that wouldn’t AT LEAST consider LSU. Saban, Meyer, Dabo, Peterson, Harbaugh, and maybe 1 or 2 other coaches. Nearly any other coach would have at least had discussions with LSU.

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Ok, fine, but who would you go for? Who could come in and be the guy that goes toe to toe for the west (and the playoff) EVERY season? I cannot identify this person.

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How can you possibly predict Aranda to be a quality head coach when he has never done it

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Past examples of well respected coordinators who have made the jump to HC leads one to believe he could likely do the same.

There's a reason programs, both college and pro look for quality available head coaches AND quality coordinators. If there was not a record of success when hiring guys who had only been coordinators, literally no one would do it, least of all NFL teams where money is the only object.

There is no guarantee, mind you, but if you're forcing me to choose between a guy that is considered to be one of the finest young minds in football who has succeeded as a coordinator at two different stops and a guy who has never been a coordinator but who in his only full time head coaching gig ran a program further into the ditch than they had ever gone before, I'm going with the former 10 out of 10 times.